Is 'Time running out' for Kiribati as 'seas rise'?

I'm sure I've had this feeling of deja vu before.

The low-lying Pacific nation of Kiribati is running out of time on climate change as seas rise, and is drafting plans including mass relocation of its people while the world procrastinates on the issue, the country's leader says.

President Anote Tong said areas of Kiribati -- consisting of more than 30 coral atolls, most only a few metres (feet) above sea level -- had already been swamped by the rising ocean.

I'll ignore the obvious howler about metres and feet and concentrate on the rest of this article on TerraDaily, particularly the "rising ocean". The South Pacific Sea Level & Climate Monitoring Project managed by Australia's BOM has been recording sea level and climate data in the central and south-west Pacific for almost two decades. Their data to end 2011 provides the content of my South Pacific Sea Level reference page. the latest updates to October 2012 were released just over a week ago. Here's the updated chart for Kiribati.

Source: Bureau of Meteorology

The red 3-year (37 month centred) average line shows that current levels have risen to what they were 10-11 years ago. I'm not saying that in general sea levels aren't rising worldwide - clearly they are. I'm not saying that in general sea levels in the pacific aren't rising - my reference page shows they are, but the data for Kiribati shows no increase over the last decade.

The threat to the atolls of Kiribati and other low-lying Pacific islands comes not from rising sea-levels, but from rapidly rising sea-levels. Coral atolls grow upwards as sea-level rises. The surface that islanders live and farm on wasn't there a few thousand years ago. There's a threat only if the corals can't migrate upwards at a sufficient rate, and if insufficient coral debris accumulates at the land surface to maintain the atoll area. A survey done a couple of years ago showed that most Pacific atolls were growing in area rather than shrinking. However the growth was net growth; some land was eroded away, and new land created as waves accumulated coral debris in other places. In the short term that doesn't help the islanders much. I've no doubt that on the main atoll Tarawa and others in the Kiribati group, some areas had "already been swamped by the rising ocean" as Mr. Tong is quoted as saying.

Mr. Tong seems to me to have moderated his language and curbed his use of hyperbole recently, indeed in an article of similar tone on NBC News "As sea levels rise, Kiribati eyes 6,000 acres in Fiji as new home for 103,000 islanders" he says "changing rainfall, tidal and storm patterns pose as least as much threat as ocean levels, which so far have risen only slightly". However, NBC News manages to get something wrong, as usual (yes, I'm a cynic). They show a picture of the largest atoll Tarawa captioned "Kiribati, seen here in an aerial photo taken in 2004". For Kiribati to be shown in a photograph would require it to be taken from a satellite. The TerraDaily writers point out that it consists of "more than 30 coral atolls and the NBC page itself has a map showing the group extends for something akin to the E-W width of Australia.

The NBC article ends with something interesting, and which i wasn't aware of:

Although like much of the Pacific, Kiribati is poor — its annual GDP per person is just $1,600 — Tong said the country has plenty of foreign reserves to draw from for the land purchase. The money, he said, comes from phosphate mining on the archipelago in the 1970s.

Now call me a cynic (darn - I've already admitted that), but doesn't allowing large chunks of your valuable real-estate which rises no more than a few metres above sea-level to be carted away by ship seem rather short-sighted to you?

"Entire nation of Kiribati to be relocated over rising sea level threat" - more nonsense

UPDATE 12/3/2012 - Media hype and something akin to senile dementia appear to have blown this out of all proportion - details at the the end of this post. Message ends.

Here we go again, if it's not birds/pika/trees/polar bears/ice-hockey at risk from global warming or climate change, or both, it's Pacific islands slipping quietly beneath rising waves. The Daily Telegraph - where circulation wins over facts, cannot recognise a naked ploy to attract foreign aid and sympathy when it sees one:

Entire nation of Kiribati to be relocated over rising sea level threat 

The low-lying Pacific nation of Kiribati is negotiating to buy land in Fiji so it can relocate islanders under threat from rising sea levels.

In what could be the world's first climate-induced migration of modern times, Anote Tong, the Kiribati president, said he was in talks with Fiji's military government to buy up to 5,000 acres of freehold land on which his countrymen could be housed. 

Some of Kiribati's 32 pancake-flat coral atolls, which straddle the equator over 1,350,000 square miles of ocean, are already disappearing beneath the waves.

Most of its 113,000 people are crammed on to Tarawa, the administrative centre, a chain of islets which curve in a horseshoe shape around a lagoon.

"This is the last resort, there's no way out of this one," Mr Tong said.

 "which straddle the equator" - at least that bit's right. "Most of its 113,000 people are crammed on to Tarawa" - if rather less than half is "most" then that's true also. Why am I cynical about this "cry for help"? Mr Tong tells us

"What we need is the international community to come up with an urgent funding package to deal with that ambition, and the needs of countries like Kiribati."

From the horse's mouth, the reason for my cynicism. There's plenty more material to scan with a fact-meter in this relatively short piece, but suffice to cut to Mr. Tong's "last resort"

Kiribati, Island: Tarawa. Location: Betio    Source Data: NTC 2012

Short-term rate since 2002 is -4.7 mm/year. He was right - "there's no way out of this one".

But wait, Mr. Tong wants to lead the entire population to refuge on Fiji, like Moses parting the waves (it's a long paddle though). Shouldn't a prudent president check where he's going to tread before taking an irreversible step which might, just might, be in the wrong direction?

The land Kiribati wants to buy is understood to be on Vanua Levu, Fiji's second largest island.

The "promised land" of Vanua Levu doesn't have a tide gauge, but the larger Viti Levu, 64 km to the south has not one but two tide gauges, so Mr. Tong, who's so well acquainted with current sea level change around Tarawa, must have checked, surely? I'm not one to kick a man when he's down (Lies, all lies - Ed.), so I've checked for him, using two more charts I just happen to have lying around, as you do.

I just hope that the situation in the "promised land" is different - remember the rates shown are monthly, so multiply by 12 for annual. CGPS monitoring shows Lautoka on Viti Levu to be sinking at around 3 mm/year

Source: SONEL   

... while current homeland Tarawa is rising at a slightly higher rate. Oops.

Source: SONEL   

At least Vanua Levu is quite hilly, so all won't be lost if the situation there deteriorates. Looks like a terrible place to me (/sarc).

Vanua Levu, Fiji, the "promised land"

I'm sure they have frying pans and fires on Tarawa, so perhaps the metaphor won't be lost on Mr. "Moses" Tong.

UPDATE

Looks like Mr.Tong has been forced to take a reality pill. Now he says "... the land will be used to help prepare younger generations for a future working in Australia or New Zealand". He previously said, as reported above, that he was "in talks with Fiji's military government to buy up to 5,000 acres of freehold land on which his countrymen could be housed". One small problem for him - he has neither the authority nor the hard cash to do any such thing. A former President, Teburoro Tito has now said that "reports that the Cabinet has endorsed a plan to buy nearly 3,000 hectares on Fiji’s main island are ridiculous", and that "nothing of the sort has been discussed in parliament".

“People here are laughing about that, they think it’s a joke. That’s the initial reaction. And as I said earlier where did the President get the idea from? Which people - his own island, the island I’m representing or some other people in Kiribati.”

It's good to see that Kiribati, like the US, has a president who's in touch with reality and has his people and government behind him.

South Pacific Sea Level to September 2011

Note: A permanent and (to be) regularly updated page has been created (see top of sidebar) located here. I've updated this page with data to December 2011.

The island sea level charts are drawn from monthly data from the South Pacific Sea Level and Climate Monitoring Project. I've included a chart for a second Fiji station, and also one at the end for a New Zealand station, Jackson Bay (South Island). Neither is part of the project, but data is provided on the website.

The high resolution SEAFRAME (Sea Level Fine Resolution Acoustic Measuring Equipment) monitoring stations comprise modern integrated housings which measure and record sea level, barometric pressure, water temperature and air temperature. Most of the stations were installed in 1992 and 1993, though a few were later. It's important to note that the effect of local land movement is eliminated from sea level data:

The Continuous Global Positioning System (CGPS) network monitors vertical movement in the earth's crust, such as subsidence or tectonic shifts, at the SEAFRAME tide gauges and adjacent land. Sea level data can then be adjusted to compensate for the earth's movement to within a millimeter, enabling the absolute sea level to be determined. 

I have voiced criticism of Australia's Bureau of Meteorology on various topics in the past, but as far as the presentation of sea level data is concerned, I rate their National Tidal Centre as the best. The page I linked to above has a table of the 12 stations in the project (and the two others I mentioned) which links to PDF plots and data tables for sea level, barometric pressure, water temperature and air temperature. The data tables in turn link to online graphical plots and text files for easy import to spreadsheets. A map links directly to the data tables. I liked that Idea so much I've pinched it for use here.

What should be evident from the plots is that any generalisation of the situation over this wide area is invalid. Apart from an almost universal downward spike during the 1997/98 ENSO event, the history and trends differ widely. It should also be clear that claims of "25 mm/year" or "no rise" since the early 1990s are also invalid.

Most of the charts are dominated by a downward "spike" in 1997/98. The level drop was due to unusually high barometric pressure during the 1997/98 ENSO ("El Niño/La Niña-Southern Oscillation") event. The correlation is well illustrated for the Marshall Islands (Majuro Atoll), so I've placed this first. Kiribati and Tuvalu have been given much attention in the news media and on the 'net recently, so they're listed next.

Readers are welcome to reproduce any of the plots - all I ask is that attribution be given, preferably with a link to this post. I haven't used thumbnails - right-click on the image and select "save image as" or whatever your browser prompts.

Level data has been converted from metres to millimetres to overcome loss of precision in Excel's trend data. Gaps in the plots indicate gaps in the original data. Note that the trend slope is monthly - multiply by 12 to get the annual value (e.g. y = 0.2269x gives 2.7228 mm/year).

Select a location from the map to view a graph of the monthly sea level statistics for that location. Click on the bottom of the blue area for the NZ station, Click on your browser's back button to return to the map.

Source: Bureau of Meteorology     

Marshall Islands

Island: Majura   Location: Uliga

Note the 1997/98 ENSO "spike" and the correspondence with the abnormally high atmospheric pressure from late 1997 to late 1998 shown in the barometric pressure plot below:

Kiribati

Island: Tarawa   Location: Betio

The trend line is pulled down by the ENSO dip from the end of 1997 to end 1998. To give an better view of the trend from 1992 to present, I replotted the chart with that data excluded:

The resulting trend is effectively zero.
A downward trend is evident from end 2001 to present:

Tuvalu

Atoll:Funafuti   Island: Fongafale

As with Kiribati, the deep ENSO dip in 1997/98 pulls the trend line down on the left; it's below the 1994/1997 average. A zero trend is evident from 1999 to present:

Papua New Guinea

Island: Manus   Location: Lombrum

Here's a clearer view of the 1999-2011 trend of 3.4 mm/year, slightly above the global average:

Solomon Islands

Island: Guadalcanal   Location: Honiara

Again the trend is pulled down on the left; the average level 1999 to present is around 750 mm, and the trend 2.1 mm/year.

Vanuatu

Island: Efate   Location: Port Vila

The big 1997/98 downward spike evident in most of the other plots is absent; instead there's a relatively steady upward trend.

Fiji

Island: Viti Levu   Location: Lautoka

Island: Viti Levu   Location: Suva

Tonga

Island: Tongatapu   Location: Nuku'alofa

Although there's a steep trend from 1993, current levels are not dissimilar to those between 2000 and 2003.

Cook Islands

Island: Rarotonga   Location: Avatiu

Levels seem to have stabilised from 2006.

Samoa

Island: Upolu   Location: Apia

The familiar ENSO dip pulls the trend down at the LHS, but there is a sharp upward "spike" from 2010.

Nauru

Island: Nauru   Location: Aiwo

Overall trend is effectively flat - levels at present similar to those in 1993. However, the trend from 2002 is downward.

Federated States of Micronesia

Island: Pohnpei   Location: Dekehtik

An overall upward trend, though little change from 2007 to present.

New Zealand

Island: South Island   Location: Jackson Bay

There seems to be little overall change from mid-1998 (after the ENSO dip) to present. A plot from 1999 confirms that:

Kiribati, "where rising sea levels are a very real threat"

From the Sydney Morning Herald - Ban Ki-moon challenges climate sceptics:

Speaking at the University of Sydney, he talked of the need for world leaders to address global challenges including climate change, pandemics, and issues involving food, energy and waste.

Regarding climate change, he urged sceptics to visit the Pacific island nation of Kiribati, where rising sea levels are a very real threat.

The impoverished nation was facing a bill of $947 million just to protect infrastructure from the effects of climate change, and had yet to come up with viable ways to relocate some of the population.

Mr Ban added the country was running out of time and hoped Australia would lead the way "for your own good as well as well as that of the planet".

I for one don't need to visit Kiribati to see "rising sea levels" there. Latest data from the South Pacific Sea Level and Climate Monitoring Project run at the BOM (to end of July 2011) which I've just graphed -

Betio, Kiribati – trend from Jan 2002 to July 2011 -5.48 mm/year

An ounce of data is worth a ton of hot air.